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Month: June 2017

So, as I mention in my “About” page, I am an attorney by profession. Although I am primarily an estate planning attorney (wills, trusts, etc…), periodically I will have to do an eviction while settling an estate. As time went on, I decided that I would pick up evictions on their own, not just in association with closing estates.

At any rate, I had an eviction to file in Hamilton County and decided to fly down if possible. Well, I did, and I got caught dodging thunderstorms. The image at the top shows me going northwest around a thunderstorm before turning south to Cincinnati. That added an extra 45 minutes onto the flight.

Along the way though, we passed a few places we otherwise would not have seen from the air.

Wright-Patterson Air Force BaseKing’s Island Amusement Park

Even with the diversion, we made it into Lunken, Cincinnati’s regional airport. It’s quite close to downtown and an Uber ride was just a couple bucks to get me to the court house.

Cincinnati Municipal Airport – Lunken Field (KLUK)

See how nice the skies were when I came in? Gorgeous blue with a few clouds.

Well, they weren’t so nice coming out. I made it out of there about 15 minutes before it was enveloped in thunderstorms which would have blocked me in for another 4-6 hours. Then I had to dodge a few cells to avoid lightning on the way out but otherwise had a pretty direct flight back to Columbus.

Short advertisement: If you need estate planning, give me a call at my office.

I was taking my old friend John up for a flight to Put-In-Bay to grab some dinner. John has a few in-laws that are also pilots so this was nothing new to him. Around 1/2 way up there though, we got a text from my parents inviting us to eat at the yacht club. Change of plans, we’ll land at Port Clinton instead and get a bite there.

But since we’re already at the lake, might as well do a quick tour.

Rattlesnake Island to the left, Middle Bass Island is the large island on the right. North Bass Island is the island in the background.

After touring the local islands, it was time to drop in at PCW. Never landed on Runway 18 before there but it has a nice approach over some intra-coastal homes.

Short Final, KPCW, Runway 18

After that it was time to head back. We were running later than planned and definitely going to get a little night flying in, but luckily as you can see from my previous post, I am night current so hauling a passenger was no issue.

We flew high on the way back to get the best wind. Here is what northern Ohio looks like from 10,500 feet.

Northern Ohio, 10,500 feet

It’s all the same. Farm farm farm farm farm. If you spend all your time in Columbus, Cincinnati, or Cleveland and you don’t seem to understand Ohio or Ohio politics, this is why. This is Ohio. The cities are just little dots on the map.

Speaking of which, here we are straight in to runway 23 at night at KOSU.

A little north of highways 270 and 315 heading south to the OSU airport.

Private pilots are allowed to fly at night with no more restrictions than they have during the day. However, to take passengers up at night, pilots need to be “night current” which means having performed at least three take-offs and full-stop landings within the last 90 days.

I hadn’t done any night flying for a while but I might sometime this summer so I decided to get night current again by taking a short solo flight around the local pattern for a couple stop & go landings.

Pre-flight for a short solo night flight.

The thing about night flying is that it’s tough to see stuff in the dark so it’s good to fly at a familiar airport. However, of all things, this particular evening they were using Runway 5 which I have never taken off from nor landed on.

Taking off is no big deal, I know the airport layout pretty well these days. But landing on an unfamiliar runway is a bit eerie even when you know there are no obstacles on your glide path.

Short final runway 5

It was a good flight, and it’s nice to be night-current again. Maybe a fireworks flight this summer?

Like this:

Took my friend Ezra out for lunch at a local airport diner. Ezra has flown with me a few times before so this was nothing new. But it was a little windier than normal and I had him do most of the flying between OSU and Grimes-Urbana so we weren’t as stable we might have been.

This left him with a queasy stomach as we came in to land for lunch.

Landing in a decent crosswind at Grimes-Urbana airport. Runway 02.

Still, lunch was had, or a late breakfast anyway.

We decided that with the brisk winds and the queasy stomach, that it might be better if I did all the flying back to OSU. We had a nice tailwind coming back so the trip was a few minutes shorter, unfortunately, as you’ll see in a moment, it was not quite short enough…